The story was broken this evening on CNNMoney that Facebook had purchased Gowalla, I actually got a heads up this morning that this might be going down soon. I’m pretty mixed on this. It’s no great secret that I was a huge Gowalla fan in the early days of location based services and geosocial but the latest evolution of the Gowalla product really drained me pretty bad and just like most of my friends I stopped using it altogether. I would have personally liked to have seen Gowalla go back to what they were in the beginning that had all of us on fire about the app but I think once the new release rolled out they were pretty much committed at that point.
What will the future hold for Gowalla? I have heard that the Gowalla team will be relocating to Palo Alto in the future and will fit into the Facebook timeline, whatever that means. To me that sounds like integration into Facebook, and that this acquisition was more or less a talent grab. I do think that there is serious room in the geosocial arena for a player like Gowalla and that they just gave up to quickly when they did what they did with their latest release.
What are your thoughts?
For some reason this just seemed appropriate…
I’m like you, I was really on fire for Gowalla when it first came out and still
Believe it is great for people who travel and who want to learn all about a new place they are visiting.
But most don’t travel that much…they stay within a certain area, predictable, and that’s where Foursquare comes in. It rewards the everyday stops.
It will be interesting to see what Gowalla does while all wrapped up in Facebook.
I would like to see more churches play aroun with Foursquare.
Thanks,
Scott
I’ve messed with the location based services a good bit and watched people use them. It’s still a huge minority and it never seemed to catch on with the younger crowd (teenagers). Latest reports are that the majority of location software on smartphones is used to find things nearby and not tell people where to find you.